


Discretion

by skripka



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-21 01:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16149686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skripka/pseuds/skripka
Summary: A day in the life—with explosions.





	Discretion

**Author's Note:**

> Love to dirty_diana for the beta. Sorry (not sorry) I left in the massive amounts of em-dashes. ;)

**April 4, 2014**

And just like that, there was one less law-enforcement agency in town.

It had been a big deal. SHIELD was debuting their new helicarriers, their new Project Insight. Notifications had gone out to all the government agencies, LEO and alphabet, warning of road and airspace closures. Everyone complained about those, considering all the chaos that had snarled up traffic earlier in the week.

Details were scarce about what Insight was supposed to do, but that was normal. It wasn’t like the NSA or FBI gave out details either. Not everyone was copied in on BOLOs, much less internal memos.

Abby and McGee had decided to do a little break on the office roof, planning to geek out a bit over how the new airships looked before they flew off on whatever mission they had. It wasn’t like there weren’t regulations about sneaking up onto the roof; but considering there were about twenty other people out there, McGee pointed out that was lot of wrist slapping for a fifteen or so minute event. 

It wasn’t hard to see the Triskelion from the Navy Yard. Arlington was quite a distance up the Potomac, but the building was massive.

Abby shaded her eyes. “Where are they hiding the ships, anyway?”

McGee shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t in any of the notices.”

“No airfields past Reagan. It’s not really a deep river up here, either.” Abby frowned.

“It’s sort of navigable? If you don’t have to deal with the bridges, at least.” McGee looked at his watch. “Less than seven minutes ‘til launch.”

“Twenty-four feet is not enough for a normal carrier, and you know it, McGee.”

He shrugged again. Their fellow agents joined them at the northwest corner. “Something’s happening,” a male voice said from behind Abby’s right shoulder.

The water was roiling; huge whorls, if they could be seen from the Anacostia. A few agents quietly whistled amazement.

“Wonder why they moved it up.”

“Under the river? Wow.” 

“That took balls.”

“It’s SHIELD, they play by their own rules.”

“Hush,” ordered Abby, and they could hear the launching sirens finally. 

The ponderous ships lumbered from their berths, and rose into the air. Abby felt a grin tugging at her lips. 

“What’s that?” Diaz worked in records, and sounded concerned. The group all looked to see a fireball blossom near the launch site, then another on the deck of the lowest helicarrier. The retort of gunfire and explosions reached their ears at last.

“Shit!”

“We’d better get inside.”

***

Abby and McGee rushed into the bullpen. Everything was chaos—the news coverage as well. Nobody could get in close enough to get good video—the only decent shots were from cell phones near the Tidal Basin, and they didn’t reveal a damned thing.

DiNozzo was staring intently at the screen and Bishop was trying to find more information on her phone. Gibbs stood and watched stoically, frowning. There were a few extra agents watching with their team, and several other groups collected in front of screens throughout the bullpen.

“Do you suppose this has anything to do with the Steve Rogers thing from yesterday? Or that terrorist attack on Seventeenth?” DiNozzo muttered, just above his breath. Gibbs’ frown deepened.

Suddenly, orange and yellow lights bloomed on the video; reporters panicked, cell phone holders ducked, and an explosion rattled the windows. 

“Holy …” McGee’s voice trailed off. 

“Did they just start shooting at each other?” someone from the next aisle asked.

When the last helicarrier crashed into the Triskelion, every soul in the bullpen stood in shocked silence for almost a whole minute. 

The shockwaves this time made the entire building rumble. 

***

Anyone not on an active case was tasked with assisting first responders, Gibbs’ team among them. There were plenty of casualties, but no fatalities ended up at their morgue.

SHIELD’s data dump was going to be a larger issue. There was just so much: not just from the past 30-odd years, but apparently SHIELD had been digitizing their oldest files systematically, which meant another couple of decades of data. A server and tech team were dedicated to combing through it all, and they even pulled in spare CPUs from any computer that sat idle for more than thirty minutes.

HYDRA’s long-term infiltration of a trusted agency was another gut punch. 

Immediately, nearly every agency in town started cleaning house. The NSA held out for about six hours, but then capitulated to public opinion and outcry. The parking lot at NCIS had a few more spaces the next morning. DiNozzo grimly predicted that there were going to be more in the coming week. 

Abby’s post-HYDRA security interview was harrowing, exhaustive, and invasive; despite the fact that she _knew_ for a fact that she had never knowingly aided HYDRA, she started cataloguing all the work she had done over the years, and came to the conclusion that she probably had done something somewhere along the way. Their fingers had been in _everything_. 

Gibbs spent a good ten minutes holding and soothing her as she tried not to throw up. 

***

And after all that came the warnings of a probable KGB assassin on the run. The BOLO didn’t say if he had caused the helicarrier crash, or just happened to catch the show. It didn’t even have much more than a rough sketch attached. Long hair, mask of some sort, and something that looked like a metal prosthesis. He was considered armed and dangerous, and Gibbs decreed that nobody on his team was allowed to travel or stay alone until further notice. 

It turned into musical sofas at that point. Abby would wake and try to remember whose house she had crashed at, or who was snoring loudly in her living room (Bishop). 

Steve Rogers showed up on television a day or two later, bruised but steady on his feet at a press conference, just after Natasha Romanov’s Senate hearing. There was another round of firings and jailings after that. Several seats in congress were suddenly opened up; more than a couple of agencies needed new directors. Nobody was unaffected. 

HYDRA had been far more successful than anyone was comfortable knowing.

***

Things quieted down then. The team got a missing persons case, and most of them hied off to Groton. Abby was finally able to go home by herself, and she sighed in relief when she got off at the Metro stop and started walking home. She had received a box of groceries that morning, and was looking forward to not cooking for anyone else and definitely not sharing her wine. 

Alexandria was quiet and calm in the spring twilight. Abby strolled easily along the street, and she nearly missed seeing the homeless guy. He had pulled his entire body into the shadow of an alley. There was no hand or anything outstretched, and his hat was pulled firmly over his eyes. He had on a way too heavy jacket and gloves on his hands. His mouth was moving silently, but he didn’t seem to be in any real distress. 

Abby had gotten into the habit of helping the homeless over the past few years; many of them were vets, after all. “Hey,” she asked, and the guy looked up, wary. “Can I…do you need any money? Directions to a shelter?” 

Of course Abby had safety on her mind—Gibbs, Ducky, DiNozzo, and even McGee had drilled her over the years, plus the BOLO was still active—but as she analyzed the face under the cap, she realized the man was young, definitely too young to have worked for an espionage agency that had disbanded in 1991. Not unattractive, either, if you could get past the haunted look in his eyes and the unkempt hair. “Do you need help?” she repeated.

He gave her a look that switched rapidly from shocked to confused to fearful and finally settled on a frown. “No,” he muttered, eyes going back to the ground. 

“Are you sure? There’s a VA hospital not far. I can get you a cab.”

He shook his head. “No,” he insisted again.

Abby sighed and looked up and down the street; nobody else was around to help her. She started to pull a twenty out of her purse, heard a breath of wind, and when she looked back down, realized that the man had disappeared. There was no trace of him in the alley, the street, or anywhere.

Shocked, she swore, and didn’t quite high-tail it home. She triple checked her locks when she got her groceries inside. When Gibbs called to check on her later, she decided not to say anything about the unsettling, disappearing homeless guy.

Discretion was the better part of valor, after all.

***

**June 8, 2014**

It was just over two years later when the BOLO from Austria came through. The Winter Soldier, a.k.a James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, former KGB assassin and asset, previously wanted in connection with the Triskellion incident, and a suspect in far too many killings over far too many decades, had set off a bomb at a UN conference, and no one knew what his next target could be—or even what continent it could be on. This time, the BOLO actually had an honest-to-God photo attached.

Abby held the printout at arm’s length for a moment longer than necessary. She squinted at the blurry image, hoping it would become higher resolution by some miracle.

She tried remembering the homeless guy from the Triskellion incident. Her memory blurred over details, but the KGB had split in the nineties. There was no way the guy she saw had been old enough to have worked for that agency, right? There was no way a guy younger than her could have assassinated the Starks, much less JFK. Or. Or. Or.

Her hands shook a little, and Abby gathered herself. No way. And there was no way Gibbs was ever hearing about that little incident.

Ever.


End file.
